QuoteReplyTopic: Just say no to the new poly balls. Sign petition!! Posted: 06/05/2012 at 9:40am

My name is James Lindberg and I play at the Baton Rouge Table Tennis
Club (http://brttc.org/ ) in Louisiana, USA.

Although I'm relatively new to organized table tennis and am a low level
player, I grew up playing table tennis or "ping-pong", as we knew it, in my basement in Michigan. I'm 49 now.

I wanted to contact you in my effort to keep the current
celluloid ball. The ITTF is going full speed to introduce the new poly
(plastic) ball on July 1, 2014. I've started a petition to try and keep
the celluloid ball.

At the minimum, my hope is that the ITTF doesn't make the change to the new poly ball until the playing characteristics, durability, and cost of the ball are identical to the current, traditional, celluloid ball.

My stance is, we need a voice and I'm looking for 10K signatures on
the petition so I can distribute it to the ITTF, USATT, and other TT
organizations worldwide.

An article written by Greg Letts (Greg Letts is a world ranked table tennis player, an Australian Level 1
table tennis coach, and an internationally qualified table tennis
umpire.) on the protest of the ball, referencing my petition:

The ittf doesn't care one bit about the low end players. They've said it straight up.

This doesn't mean that we can't try and at least present something or share our voice on what the majority of players (us low end players) of the sports wishes are. It only takes a few seconds to sign the petition anyway.

Wouldn't it be something if some pro's names started popping up on this?

If anything, maybe the TT press (is there TT press?) may pick up on it and will put some pressure on Sharara.

Still.. the ball can change for all we know to be just as good or better. The reviews so far, aren't encouraging. A lot can happen though in less than 2yrs time.

It is rather an unwise and hasty action to decry the poly balls before we have an ultimate edition of PB at our hand..
Let's live and see if the DHS comes out with a better product.
If, in a year period,, I do not see any improvement of the POLY ball"s playing characteristics, I will gladly join this petition. Not before.

It is rather an unwise and hasty action to decry the poly balls before we have an ultimate edition of PB at our hand..
Let's live and see if the DHS comes out with a better product.
If, in a year period,, I do not see any improvement of the POLY ball"s playing characteristics, I will gladly join this petition. Not before.

I can see your point. However, we already know the play of the celluloid ball. The sky isnt falling...there is not a good reason to change..in my opinion.

Id like something as simple as the ball to remain the traditional material that almost all of us have grown up with.

What's the reason for the petition? Simply to give us, the regular players, a voice.

The regular players are those that keep the table tennis industry in business. It's not the pro players, who mostly are given their equipment, while us, the regular players are out purchasing balls, blades, rubbers, tables, etc. etc.

My hope is we have enough signatures to present this petition not only to the ITTF, but the USATT and all of the other major associations to see that the players are wanting to keep the traditional celluloid ball and the game characteristics it provides, with reasonable durability and cost.

If we wait 2 yrs to see the finished product, and it isn't much different than the current review balls now, we will be too late to do anything and will be stuck with buying new equipment, to change our games to meet the simplest aspect of the game.....THE BALL.

Should we trust in the ITTF and the manufacturers to produce a ball that will have the same "game play", reasonable durability, and cost as the current celluloid ball? Apparently, they've been at it for some time now without much success as witnessed by the reviews so far. Will they figure it out in less than a year and a half? They do need time to ramp up production.

SPREAD THE WORD!

Click on the "email friends" tab on the petition form to email all your playing buddies.

All the current threads on equipment choices is going to be interesting to review if this new ball is not improved much and is indeed set forth in 2014.

I'm imagining that the threads are going to increase by a large margin trying to figure out what will work well with the new ball and the millions having to be re-spent just to get to the same levels we are at now.

It is rather an unwise and hasty action to decry the poly balls before we have an ultimate edition of PB at our hand..
Let's live and see if the DHS comes out with a better product.
If, in a year period,, I do not see any improvement of the POLY ball"s playing characteristics, I will gladly join this petition. Not before.

It is rather an unwise and hasty action to decry the poly balls before we have an ultimate edition of PB at our hand..
Let's live and see if the DHS comes out with a better product.
If, in a year period,, I do not see any improvement of the POLY ball"s playing characteristics, I will gladly join this petition. Not before.

It is rather an unwise and hasty action to decry the poly balls before we have an ultimate edition of PB at our hand..
Let's live and see if the DHS comes out with a better product.
If, in a year period,, I do not see any improvement of the POLY ball"s playing characteristics, I will gladly join this petition. Not before.

I disagree

If we just wait and 'trust' them to come up with a better option, we'll
have no time to make any sort of effort to object when they're released.
I doubt they would release any balls to the public if they didn't feel
they were close to the final thing.

Manufacturer have already
been told that the new poly balls will be introduced in 2014. They know
that once the ITTF adops them, national association will follow and this
will filter down to the clubs. So they're expecting much lower demand
for celluloid balls, and will most like drop production to a very low
level, or seize production altogether. This will seal the doom of the
celluloid balls, and then we'll have no choice but to accept them.

In the end, I don't think we have any choice but to accept them, but it's a good thing to show that we aren't happy about the change.

I wonder if they (ITTF, everyone involved in the process with the Polyballs) know's that the balls aren't any good and that's why they make it so hard to get hold of them? I know plenty of players who would like to try them, cause it is hard to form an opinion about them before we have tried them.

I wonder how many people that are against the new ball.......might play better or win more games with the new ball. It all remains to be seen how we less than pro's will feel about the new ball after we have time to use it for a few months. Who knows, maybe a fast blade with Mark V will work better than a setup your using now....

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